To be clear, Tony Stewart doesn't need Daytona for a ticket into NASCAR's Hall of Fame. He will be good to go after he retires. But it's one of those bucket-list deals. Similar to the late Dale Earnhardt, Stewart has mostly spun in circles here trying to win the Great American Race.

He is winless in 13 starts. Overall, the record is fairly impressive: Six top 10s that includes a second-place finish in 2004 and a third-place finish in 2008.

He will start in the No. 3 position Sunday, just behind two Jack Roush Fords, trying to silence whatever sliver of doubt remains about his legacy.

""I don't think we feel jinxed," he said earlier this week. "We've had some really good cars here, and we've just missed. ... We've been leading late in these races, and so I feel like [with] the law of averages, we're going to get one eventually. "

The Daytona 500 is Stewart's only hiccup here. He picked up his 17 victory at Daytona on Thursday after winning the first race in the Gatorade Duels. He is now second on the all-time list of winners at Daytona, trailing only Earnhardt, who blew away the competition with 34 victories.

But as Earnhardt found out before winning here in 1998, Daytona is a peculiar beast. Restrictor-plate racing on superspeedways always ratchets up the element of unexpected surprises — and mayhem. Holler if you had 20-year-old Trevor Bayne as the winner in the 2011 Daytona 500.

"When you look at this race, everybody has the most optimum opportunity to prepare for it," Kevin Harvick said. "I think as you go through the year, the strong teams that have the depth and can climb themselves out of a hole as they wreck some cars; at this particular race, everybody has an opportunity to prepare for it."

Earnhardt finally got his cherished victory.

Will Stewart finally celebrate his 14 years later?

"There's just something magical about Daytona," Stewart said. "Just like IndyCar racing, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Indy 500 are the same way. When it's the most important race of your season, especially the first one, all the drivers and all the teams and all the crews put more pressure on themselves for that one race than they do anywhere else the rest of the year.

"Especially at a place where the draft is so important, you don't get away from each other. It really brings everybody into the fold, and everybody has a shot at winning this race."